Paradise Lost

The silken canopies of azure and white were overcast by an infernal canvas of Hellfire and Brimstone; kites of
our childhood no longer adorn them and the lone woodpecker never flutters across them, overtaken by wings of iron; hedgerow shrubs of strawberry and aster were replaced by entanglements of barbed-wire and razor.
It was the sudden death of youth’s innocence: the scorching hot barren wasteland, its morbid sepulcher;
the great south-eastern wall, a colossal tombstone.



— Fahim Ferdous Kibria